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ammartino44's avatar
ammartino44
Helper III
9 years ago
Solved

Power Bi vs. Data Warehouse

Hello. Everyone says that a data warehouse and Power Bi are complementary and that the better you get with Bi the more a data warehouse can be put to good use. I almost see that Power BI is a replace...
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  • ankitpatira's avatar
    ankitpatira
    9 years ago
    ammartino44 we're doing exactly that using power bi on top of data warehouse. Good thing is power bi has ability of DirectQuery feature which means power bi connects live to your data source and doesn't import any data from the warehouse as data warehouse has millions of rows of records. I would suggest you use DQ feature of power bi and connect straight to data warehouse and that would also eliminate your problem of memory issues.
  • v-qiuyu-msft's avatar
    v-qiuyu-msft
    9 years ago

    Hi ammartino44,

     

    Power BI is cloud-based business analytics service that enables anyone to visualize and analyze data. In my opinion, the ultimate goal of Power BI is to visualize data. It's not a full replacement of data warehouse. But Power BI desktop also provide features for us to model and shape data:

     

    Modeling

    Power BI for Data Modelling

     

     

    By the way, the big difference between DirectQuery and Import mode is no data is imported or copied into Power BI Desktop in DirectQuery mode. For more information, please refer to this article: Use DirectQuery in Power BI Desktop.

     

    Best Regards,
    Qiuyun Yu

a_mixed_life's avatar
a_mixed_life
Resolver I
9 years ago

As noted by others, it is not meant to replace Data Warehouse. Maybe to be used if you don't have a data warehouse or can't afford and you're a very small (startup) company it may work.

 

I use Data Warehouse and Cubes with PowerBI. Using PowerBI specifically only for Visualization however quick measurements is easy on PowerBI versus me writing or rewriting SQL.

 

ammartino44's avatar
ammartino44
Helper III
9 years ago

a_mixed_life I still don't get how it wouldn't replace a data warehouse. Maybe I'm struggling to see what a data warehouse is (the full potential). I CANNOT get granular data in my data warehouse. In power BI, when I can get data dumps I can build the data into whatever angles/views I want it to be. Per IT, we can get the data warehouse to where it will add all the necessarry metrics but that's always the next iteration, so it seems that anything new or outside of the scope of the stock metrics and looks in the data warehouse tool, would be better to use power b. 

 

Also, do you use powerpivot on top of the data warehouse? How do you get the data for visualization?